The Sinai Campaign was held. This war, followed Egypt's decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal. The war was initiated by United Kingdom and France, and conducted in cooperation with Israel, aimed at occupying the Sinai Peninsula, with the Europeans regaining control over the Suez Canal. Although the Israeli occupation of the Sinai was successful, the US and USSR forced it to abandon this conquest. However, Israel managed to re-open the Straits of Tiran and secured its southern border.

The Yom Kippur War was fought. The war, which began with a surprise joint attack on two fronts by the armies of Syria (in the Golan Heights) and Egypt (in the Suez Canal), was deliberately initiated during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Egypt was winning until Operation Nickel Grass was carried out by the USA to save Israel. Ceasefire was later established.

The First Lebanon War took place during which Israel invaded southern Lebanon due to the constant terror attacks on northern Israel by the Palestinian guerrilla organizations resident there. The war resulted in the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanon, and created an Israeli Security Zone in southern Lebanon.

Operation Solomon: IDF forces conduct a secret operation in which approximately 14,400 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel within 34 hours in 30 IAF and El Al aircraft.

1992

The Bijlmerramp disaster: El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 freighter, crashed into high-rise apartment buildings in Amsterdam after two of its engines detach from the wing. A total of 43 people were killed, consisting of the plane's crew of three and a non-revenue passenger in a jump seat, plus 39 persons on the ground. Many more were injured.[9][10][11]

October 2000 events: Solidarity demonstrations are held by Arab citizens of Israel escalated into clashes with Israeli police and Israeli Jewish citizens. Twelve Israeli Arabs and one Palestinian Arab from the Gaza Strip were shot and killed by the Israeli police.[12] One Israeli Jewish civilian was killed by a rock thought to have been thrown by an Arab citizen.

The Second Intifada: The second Palestinianuprising took place in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The uprising which began as massive protests carried out by Palestinians in the Palestinian Territories, soon turned into a violent Palestinian guerrilla campaign which included numerous suicide attacks carried out against Israeli civilians within the state of Israel. (to 2005)

As a result of the significant increase of suicide bombing attacks within Israeli population centers during the first years of the Second Intifada, Israel began the construction of the West Bank Fence along the Green Line border arguing that the barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian terrorism. The significantly reduced number of incidents of suicide bombings from 2002 to 2005 has been partly attributed to the barrier.[14] The barrier's construction, which has been highly controversial, became a major issue of contention between the two sides.

400 Palestinian Arab prisoners, 30 Lebanese and other Arab prisoners, and the remains of 59 Lebanese militants and civilians were transferred to Hezbollah, together with maps showing Israeli mines in South Lebanon, in exchange for the bodies of the three dead IDF soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Suaad, as well as the abducted Israeli citizen Elchanan Tenenbaum, who had been captured by Hezbollah after being lured to Dubai for a drug deal.

Operation Cast Lead: IDF forces conducted a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip during which dozens of targets there were attacked in response to ongoing rocket fire on the western Negev. (to 2009)

The largest forest fire in Israel's history[20] engulfed a bus carrying cadets from the Israel Prison Service's officer course en route to evacuate prisoners from the Damun Prison in the area of the fire, taking 44 lives, including 37 the cadets and their officers.[21][22] The fire devastated hundreds of acres of pine forest on Mount Carmel in northern Israel, close to the city of Haifa, and was eventually brought under control late on December 5, 2010.[23]

^Nissenbaum, Dion (January 10, 2007). "Death toll of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians hit a low in 2006". Washington Bureau. McClatchy Newspapers. Retrieved April 16, 2007. Fewer Israeli civilians died in Palestinian attacks in 2006 than in any year since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000. Palestinian militants killed 23 Israelis and foreign visitors in 2006, down from a high of 289 in 2002 during the height of the uprising. Most significant, successful suicide bombings in Israel nearly came to a halt. Last year, only two Palestinian suicide bombers managed to sneak into Israel for attacks that killed 11 people and wounded 30 others. Israel has gone nearly nine months without a suicide bombing inside its borders, the longest period without such an attack since 2000[...] An Israeli military spokeswoman said one major factor in that success had been Israel's controversial separation barrier, a still-growing 250-mile (400 km) network of concrete walls, high-tech fencing and other obstacles that cuts through parts of the West Bank. ‘The security fence was put up to stop terror, and that's what it's doing,’ said Capt. Noa Meir, a spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces. [...] Opponents of the wall grudgingly acknowledge that it's been effective in stopping bombers, though they complain that its route should have followed the border between Israel and the Palestinian territories known as the Green Line. [...] IDF spokeswoman Meir said Israeli military operations that disrupted militants planning attacks from the West Bank also deserved credit for the drop in Israeli fatalities.